Daily DNC Republican: Tampa Defense, O'Malley Attack

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Deep down in the bowels of NASCAR Plaza, which should not be confused with the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is at least nominally non-partisan this week, even though they let the Fox people set up their broadcast position right in front of it, is TV Studio 43, which is named after stock-car legend Richard Petty. In 1996, Petty ran (and lost) as a Republican for Secretary of State in North Carolina, which I always thought a bit sad. You're already Richard Petty, dude. You're The King. Isn't that enough? Wouldn't it have been terrible if he'd won? It would have been like waking up and discovering that Little Richard was now only your alderman.

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Anyway, every day of the Democratic National Convention in Studio 43, the Republicans are going to do a little counter-programming, running a new campaign video every day and bringing various surrogates down into the Pettybunker to talk to us. On Monday, they brought out Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and their national chairman, obvious anagram Reince Priebus, to try and spin the whole notion that their convention in Tampa was something of a dud. Priebus noticed that the Democrats seemed "dispirited" so far down here, and he made sure we knew that the gathering last week had put the wind in his party's sails.

"The thrill and the pixie-dust of the Obama presidency is gone," Priebus snarked, failing to notice that, if you're standing on a box to see over the top of the podium, you really ought to avoid references to pixie-dust. Nonetheless, he insisted that the convention had done everything it needed to do in order to "introduce Mitt Romney to America as an honorable and decent guy."

This caused some consternation in Studio 43. After all, the man has been running for president, reasonably non-stop, since 2007. He'd run for, and had been elected, to be governor of Massachusetts. And he needed a week at the end of August in 2012 to "introduce" himself to the country as honorable and decent? This bespoke a bit of a problem.

Otherwise, both Priebus and Chaffetz — who got in a tasty sneer at the EPA — made a dinner out of Martin O'Malley's ill-structured answer to the are-you-better-off question, and thus did this most recent quasi-gaffe get seamlessly merged with the mendacious use of the president's quote about building roads and the like. (And hearing two modern Republicans say that Labor Day is a day in which we celebrate individual initiative is something every one should experience once in their lives, although, it should be noted, the Party Of The Working Man is celebrating itself this week in a city without a single unionized hotel in the heart of a right-to-work state. Solidarity Occasionally!) Later, Chaffetz got a little tangled up with a local Fox reporter who kept trying to get him to admit that obstructionism on the part of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, especially in the wake of the 2010 midterms, might have contributed to the partisan gridlock that Chaffetz had come down here to decry. "It really is a question of leadership," said Chaffetz, who mentioned that the House Republicans had passed a budget without mentioning that said budget went a long way toward repealing the years 1917-1970.

Priebus left Charlotte on Monday afternoon, but we'll be dropping by Studio 43 every day anyway to see who stops in from the other party, because we are fair and we are balanced and, doggone it, because we think they're so much fun.